John Otto, early explorers, and even the Ute Indians who once hunted in
the area were by no means the first people to view the Monument, in fact
they were “Johnnies-come-lately.” Considerable evidence indicates that
prehistoric people inhabited the area thousands of years ago.
[Illustration: MAP OF COLORADO NATIONAL MONUMENT, showing location
in Colorado, boundaries, streams, highways and roads, principal
trails, named features, overlooks, and—in triangles—trip guides
localities. The trip guides numbers correspond to the numbers in the
right margins of the section entitled “Trips through and around the
Monument.” Visitors are given pamphlets at the two entrance stations
and may purchase other reports and maps at the Visitor Center. (Fig.
3)]
Many years ago Al Look, of Grand Junction, discovered and excavated two
caves in the part of No Thoroughfare Canyon formerly outside the
Monument. He found stone projectile points, knives, awls, milling
stones, parts of a sandal and coiled basket, reed matting, corn,
corncobs, acorns, and animal bones, but no pottery—indicating that the
people had not progressed beyond basket making. Similar artifacts were
found in several other nearby places on the Uncompahgre Plateau.
Archaeologists have named this old culture the Uncompahgre Complex, and
date it back to a few thousand years before the time of Christ.[9] It
should be pointed out that it is unlawful to remove artifacts, fossils,
rocks, or minerals from a National Park or Monument.
In the summer of 1963 an archaeological survey of Colorado National
Monument was carried out, under the terms of an agreement between the
National Park Service and the University of Colorado, by Stroh and Ewing
and their field assistants.[10] A total of 75 aboriginal sites were
found of which 71 were within the Monument boundaries of that date, and
4 were closely adjacent. These comprised 41 open campsites, 24 rock
shelters, 2 small caves, and 8 chipping stations. Artifacts recovered
included 62 projectile points, 21 metates (grinding stones), 40 manos
(hand stones), 111 whole or fragments of blades or scrapers, 6 choppers,
several fragments of baskets, potsherds (bits of broken pottery) at two
sites, 2 wood awls, several strands of yucca fibers, 3 corncobs, 6
kernels of corn, several bone fragments, storage cists at five sites,
and petroglyphs at three locations.
Stroh and Ewing concluded that the majority of the sites appear to have
been the campsites of a hunting and gathering people, and they
speculated that there may have been aboriginal activity in the area from
as long as several thousand years ago to relatively recent times.
The largest of the petroglyphs,[11] or rock drawings, are on a fallen
slab of Wingate Sandstone in No Thoroughfare Canyon, and are shown in
figure 4. Archaeologist John Crouch (footnote 10), who kindly reexamined
these petroglyphs in February 1980, told me that most of the figures
appear to be Shoshonian (Ute), but that some may be of the Fremont
culture[12] or even older.
[Illustration: PETROGLYPHS, on fallen slab of Wingate Sandstone in
No Thoroughfare Canyon. Figure of man at lower right is about 6
inches high. The fading designs were traced with chalk before
photographing them. Photograph by T. R. Giles, U.S. Geological
Survey. (Fig. 4)]
[Illustration: Petroglyph]